Word: primed
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...Kenyan ancestry might lead him to give their country some kind of preferential treatment. Instead, Obama seems determined to use what influence he has in the way a parent might withhold love from an errant child. "I sometimes think Obama's roots in Kenya can actually be a problem," Prime Minister Raila Odinga said in a recent newspaper interview. "Kenya is always being held to different standards compared to neighboring countries." (See Barack Obama's family tree...
...gaffe heard around the globe. Last November, just two days after Barack Obama's historic election victory, the world's collective jaw dropped when Silvio Berlusconi quipped that the next U.S. President was "young, handsome and even has a good tan." Though the Italian Prime Minister refused to apologize for the failed attempt at humor, Obama and his aides gave Berlusconi a pass. The incoming President was not going to be sidetracked by a diplomatic incident with a man already notorious as a loose cannon. Berlusconi kept his place that week on Obama's initial round of phone calls...
...When Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki parted ways with his Shi'a allies in the ruling Iraqi National Alliance, everyone expected the wily politician, who has led Iraq since April 2006, to come up with a political bloc of his own. On Thursday, Maliki took the stage in the ballroom of Baghdad's upper-crusty Al-Rasheed hotel, before a crowd of more than 500 guests - including American, European and Asian diplomants - and, one by one, 55 leaders of his new "State of Law" coalition came up to join him. It appeared to be a veritable national unity slate, composed...
...Italy, where immigration has skyrocketed in the past decade, racism is becoming a front-burner issue. Aly Baba Faye, regional director in Rome of the Anti-Racism Observatory, says the Prime Minister's comments are indicative of attitudes in Italy and unhelpful in changing prejudices. "Berlusconi thinks he's funny, but he's not," says Faye, an Italian citizen who emigrated from Senegal 30 years ago. "For one world leader to talk about the skin color of another is utterly disrespectful and sets a bad example for ordinary folk." Faye says Berlusconi's comments make it more likely that people...
...coming months, Iraq's contending coalitions will expand and contract. Many smaller parties and candidates will decide whether one of the coalitions is right for them. Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqyia list, for example, has been holding talks with the INA but is undecided. Most importantly, the Kurdistan Alliance will be carefully courted as potential kingmaker when the votes are cast and a new government is formed. Iraq's Kurds put forward a mostly united front in their rocky relations with the central government in Baghdad over autonomy, oil sharing, and disputed territories, issues that pit it against...